eThoughts : Civility vs. Genuineness

Civility is a good thing. Without it there is no telling how much more chaos human interactions would provoke. After all, we live on an incredibly beautiful planet, in a time ripe with the promise of heightened awareness (actually the time has been ripe for some millennia), yet populated by an abundance of human idiots and idiotic human interactions. And when I say this, I am not talking about the occasions in which all of us behave like we have nothing more than brainstems, I’m talking about the pattern of human idiocy. Let’s face it, normal is not sane around here.

So, we have civility, which both helps and confuses efforts to learn the difference between sanity and insanity. In the confusion department, civility can mask disingenuousness—smiling faces with mal-intent and all of that. One question becomes how to deal with people who are not really interested in doing the right thing (promoting consideration, empathy, and a will towards creating win-wins). Civility is important, but it becomes extremely difficult to be genuine around people more into personal gain regardless of the trespass they foster. Of course the risk is that those who know the difference between civility and genuineness may become suspected of being a smiling face themselves—I mean if one cannot be genuine and has to operate primarily in the realm of civility, others may think such action not genuine.

I think civility without the ability to be truly genuine, is still genuine—as in the best that one can do. But such a state of affairs is nothing but very sad. So, for the boss whose primary interest is promotion rather than doing right by their charge, the rest of us mostly have to grin and bear it in order to not take up arms. The same is true of neighbors, politicians, even spouses.

Yep, it seems the state of human affairs is ripe with promise and rotten with mental disorders—insanity. Many psychologists believe human insanity (sanity and insanity are actually legal terms and not psychological ones) is a result of social disinterest, at least the actions that promote the good of us, as opposed to the empty rhetoric, much less the obvious antisocial behaviors.

The bottom line is that it is not safe to be genuine in a social milieu that is barely adept at being civil. Besides, learning to be genuine is nothing short of a Herculean undertaking. But you might note how much we seem to venerate those beings who not only learned to be genuine, but practice it as well. Of course we tend to venerate them after they’ve been killed off in one way or another, but we seem to understand on some level that genuine has something to do with appropriate human behavior.

About now, you might well be asking a bit more about the definition of genuine. Was Hitler genuine? Stalin? Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, etc.? In other words, can one be genuinely nuts? Yes, obviously. But ask yourself how much easier it would be to identify such people if they were genuine? But how much more sane would we be as a species if we learned and practiced the art of genuineness, as opposed to the art of deception as a way to survive? When we teach that it is not safe to be real, it is not safe to be real. When we teach social interest as the best way to serve individual interest, we do not become a nation of Barney the Dinosaurs, we become sane, even if we have to take action against another. However, I somehow suspect that such action would not be the norm of human interaction, as it has been, it would be the exception. Then what is normal might actually be sane. And that would be a wonderful addition to the beauty of an already beautiful Earth.

In the meantime, try and find the people and the communities and the politicians and the teachers and anyone else who are both genuine and sane, even if you don’t seem to get what you originally wanted. In such a case, perhaps what you wanted was not in your best interest, or perhaps it will come in a different timeframe.

As always, good luck to us.